Beck ignores Christian Coalition, pope to mock Christian environmentalists
Despite mainstream religious support for environmental safeguards, Glenn Beck mocked the group Faithful America for its advocacy for climate change as a religious issue and denounced the idea as "fascism" and "evil."
Beck, crew denounce religious concern over climate change, attack group's ads critical of Beck
Beck: religious environmentalism is "fascism" and "evil." On the July 16 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program, Beck warned listeners that any religious authority suggesting government-enacted environmental controls is actually advocating fascism, saying, "If your pastor or priest or whoever is talking about social justice and it is, 'God is telling you that the government needs to solve global warming,' run for your life. Because it is -- it's fascism that they're really behind. It is a really bad, progressive, turn-of-the-century stuff. It's evil."
Beck and co-host Burguiere: Environment, health care, immigration, war and torture not religious issues. Later in the show, Beck producer Stu Burguiere derided Faithful America -- a group running an ad campaign critical of Beck's repeated attacks on social justice -- by sarcastically saying, "Yeah, this religious group is really taking to task a lot of religious issues. For example, I'm going through their blogs here, this is pretty interesting. The first one is 'Stop the devastating effects of climate change.' That's their first religious issue." Beck added, "Well, that's a good religious issue." Burguiere went on to list Faithful America's focus issues health care reform, immigration reform, and ending war and torture, suggesting that they, too, were not legitimate religious issues.
Numerous religious groups describe climate change as a religious issue
Pope criticized the failure of world leaders to agree to a climate change treaty. The Associated Press reported in January that Pope Benedict XVI admonished world leaders for failing to produce a new climate change treaty at a summit in Copenhagen. The article also noted that the pope has stressed the importance of protecting the environment in encyclicals and speeches, and that the Vatican has installed photovoltaic cells and joined in reforestation projects. The pope was quoted as saying, "The protection of creation is not principally a response to an aesthetic need, but much more to a moral need, inasmuch as nature expresses a plan of love and truth which is prior to us and which comes from God."
Christian Coalition supported climate change legislation for economic, environment, and religious reasons. The conservative Christian Coalition purchased ads thanking Sen. Lindsey Graham for his bipartisan support for climate change legislation. The group supports climate change legislation for security, economic, and religious reasons. The Christian Coalition website explained, "As conservatives, we stand up for our country's national security and the health of our economy. And, as Christians, we recognize the Biblical mandate to care for God's creation and protect our children's future."
86 evangelical leaders signed onto the Evangelical Climate Initiative. In 2006, 86 evangelical leaders, including presidents of evangelical colleges and prominent pastor Rick Warren, signed an initiative calling for federal legislation to curb the production of greenhouse gases. Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter said, "As Christians, our faith in Jesus Christ compels us to love our neighbors and to be stewards of God's creation. The good news is that with God's help, we can stop global warming, for our kids, our world and for the Lord." Rich Cizik, former vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals and a signatory to the initiative, said, "The issue shook my theology to its core. ... It changed me as much as my being born again 30 years before. This threatens the whole planet, so it raises a basic issue of who we are as people. Climate change isn't just a scientific question. It's a moral, a religious, a cosmological question. It involves everything we are and what we have a right to do."
They are more of a political organization than a religious one.
Your use of "Agenda" as a perjorative seems too glib. Most if not all organizations have guiding principles. That being the case, what is your operational definition of "agenda"?
Finally, why is it that immigration seems the only context in which "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply? Could that be one reason why "they [and many others] are all upset when people use the word 'illegal'" rather than, e.g., "undocumented?
I am not generally down with organizations who manipulate faith and its followers for some political gain and leverage. I find it unseemly at best.
They all are. Beck just wants God to be exclusively his pitch man.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
Leviticus 25:23-24...
The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.
Jeremiah 2:7...
I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and you made my inheritance detestable.
James 5:5
You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
Revelation 11:18...
The nations were angry and your wrath has come. The time has come for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great - and for destroying those who destroy the earth.
Luke 16:2,10,13...
And He called him and said to him, "What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous in much. You cannot serve both God and mammon.
But we don't make legislative policy based on what Jesus or his disciples advocated in bible verses. Nor should be used as a club on anyone to pass such legislation, or to further some political agenda.
If we destroy God's creation won't we be doomed to hell?
Don't let your righty buddies hear you saying this--they'll scream that you've come over to the other side! Get used to them screaming "We're a Christian Nation! We're a Christian Nation! We're a Christian Nation!" at you at the top of their lungs! Just warnin' ya...
I have right wing friends and we don't discuss religion because I have no stomach for some of them wanting it injected in public policy.
I also have many liberal friends and we discuss and wrangle over all sorts of stuff because they aren't as uptight. It's more fun with them.
This Jesus?
Matthew 21:18-22 (King James Version)
18Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.
19And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
20And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!
21Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
22And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
Withering fig trees for daring to not have figs out of season (see also Mark 11:12-14) and talking about dumping mountains in the ocean sounds more like a villian on Captain Planet than an environmentalist.
It seems that Beck believes that nothing should ever be done for the environment or social issues. The government should butt out and so should the church. What is left? Corporations? The market? Or maybe social and environmental problems just don't exist. They must all be some sort of evil progressive conspiracy.
Jesus Christ also preached peace and justice, not shoot first ask questions later. Which brings the next point. He would most certainly not bless America. He would bless humanity, which is why psuedochristians like Beck, Rush, Hannity, and others are so off base. Jesus Christ had no affiliation with any nation, but they act as though He created this nation and blesses it above all others.
It is a warped view of Christianity that is used to justify their insecurities and help them procure an audience of gullible people who act as if everything they say comes from the mouth of Jesus himself.
No, God did not write the Constitution, no, God does not bless America, and no God does not condone man starting wars without end, pilliaging the environment, denying poeple healthcare, deporting the least among us back into poverty, or purposly using hurtful language simply because you don't agree with the lifestyle of a certain segment of society and think they are burning in hell.
Sorry for the rant, but as a Christian, I am sick and tired of the windbag millionaires acting as though they have a monopoly of God and and direct line to Jesus when, in fact, they are so far away from the teaching of Jesus Christ that He is not recognizable to them.
Unfortunately this is an old story. Christianity being used to promote a political agenda.
Just as the larger media needs to confront the unethical behavior of conservative media celebrities, religious leaders need to confront the manipulation of their faiths.
Just think of how many people in human history have been tortured and/or killed in the name of an invisible man or other entity. It makes one wonder if the cautionary text we really should be using as a cautionary guidebook isn't "Lord of The Flies."